


Gaps vol 2

by Kodawari



Series: Gaps [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-16 19:55:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18698119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kodawari/pseuds/Kodawari
Summary: More filling in the gaps. Thought it over last night and realized I missed some events that should have been covered in Gaps.Three stories: Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes, Tony Stark, and Wong.





	1. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes

“Buck, we have to talk.” 

They’re on the bench outside. Everyone else went in some time ago after the somber greetings. It’s a situation no one wants to hold a reunion at. Fury was elated to meet him, elated as the occasion allowed. They talked some. The direction he took the conversation in made Steve avert his eyes and feel like a criminal. Unusual emotions for America’s captain. 

“Sounds serious.” Bucky’s been through a lot, but his demeanor doesn’t show it. He has to be the most laid back person Steve knows. He’s happy for him. He deserves peace. That makes this all the harder.

“It’s going to change a lot of things. I can’t really bring it up with the others. You're the only one who'd understand.” 

Bucky tries to think the best. “Retirement? No one would begrudge you that.” 

Steve makes sure his friend is looking right at him when he says it. “A long retirement. The mission tomorrow. I’m not coming back.” 

Bucky’s eyes move like he’s reading something in front of him. He takes in a long, heavy breath, bobs a little, mulls over it. 

Steve interrupts his rumination. “I know it’s sudden.” 

“And a little out of character, Steve. A lot actually.”

“Duty over self, that’s what I was told my whole life and it culminated in my service to the Avengers.” He’s not defensive, not argumentative. It’s only a statement. 

Bucky sometimes misses the scrawny kid from Brooklyn who might stutter if you nudged him too hard. But this is who he was on the inside all that time. Factual. Dutiful. Fair. Good. That's why it feels like getting mad at a puppy. You can't. Bucky really wants to get upset over it despite who Steve is at the core. That fire inside him that fueled the Winter Soldier's rage is permanently gone. They made sure. He's still upset though. 

“You really have bad timing for someone who gets up at 5 on the dot without an alarm,” says Bucky, and Steve nods because it’s still true. “Too bad we won’t be able to work on that. We have a time machine but no time to ourselves.”

“It’s my last mission. The world is a bigger place and there’s more people in it than me who can watch over it. Stronger than me. I think you’re in good hands.” Steve knows he’s stepping around the actual issue. For the second time that day he feels guilt. 

“Fury said-” But Bucky stops short. “You’ve never been a selfish son of a bitch, you know that?” Bucky angles himself to get a better look at him. It takes Steve a while to say something.

“I wonder what it would have been like if I had been.”

“A lot easier for me...So, what do you want to do?” He asks earnestly, again catching his blue eyes. As bright and as blue as the American sky. 

“It’s a bit complicated,” Steve starts when Bucky makes a negative sound. 

“I mean in this timeline.”

Steve smirks, a wistfulness overcomes him. He thinks.

“You never got a chance to teach me how to fish.”

“Well the river was pretty shitty and you were sick all the time. All that time on ice didn’t help.”

They share the smile.

-

Steve doesn’t catch anything. Neither of them do. That’s alright. They talk about things past and present, watching the insects speed by above the surface of the water, glowing in the midday sun like freak snow in the summer. They never bring up the future. 

-

Later that night, Steve gets a call that wakes him from his sleep. 

“I thought about it.” 

“And?”

“It’s only fair. I’m living a second chance right now. It wouldn’t be right to keep that from you...after all you’ve done. You’ve never been selfish. I think God will allow it this one time.”

“I know He can forgive. What about you?”

“Above my pay grade.” Steve can hear the humor in his voice.

-

They agree on the meeting spot. But there’s another issue at hand.

“Not me, I don’t want it. Besides, the White Wolf sounds pretty badass. I might not even have to draw blood with a title like that.” Buck stands a little taller. 

Steve understands. He’s been through enough. He won’t put that on him. He knows of someone else, fortunately. Someone who’s needed to be given a chance for some time. Besides, America isn’t the America he knew, and that’s a good thing. 

“Tell her I said hi.” 

“I will. I’ll see you again Bucky. Some other time.”

Buck tilts his head. “There’s thousands of us in a thousand different places. Banner explained it. I don’t have the brain for that, but I’m sure we’re growing up into old geezers together in at least one of them.”

Steve puts a hand on his comrade’s - his friend’s- shoulder. The man who believed in him before the serum. The guy who was always there to rescue him. His role model. He squeezes it and Bucky is the one who initiates the hug. Both of them don’t talk about how their eyes might have gotten watery afterwards, but they do insult the other in that good old army banter. 

“Damn, I’m going to miss you.”

“Language.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Russo's confirmed that Steve does indeed end up in a different timeline, so he didn't alter the past as we know it at all.


	2. Tony Stark and Peter Parker

He gains weight. It takes some time but he’s right on track according to the doctor. He still he has to use the cane on the days his legs are weak. He’s become jittery, starting at ordinary noises in his own home. He wakes up in cold sweats with the sensation that he’s been hugging onto something that isn’t there anymore. He doesn’t dare to put a name to it. It’s post-New York all over again. How much can one man take? He’s an experiment to some crazed force beyond his control. It’s hell admitting that. He has to fight himself to give in. Just give in.

Pepper’s the only one preventing him from turning into an alcoholic. What’s the point. She is. She’s the point. 

-

He has a standoff with the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing device in the small hours of the morning. A month since he’s gotten back. He’s been rendezvousing with it on the regular, even if he wouldn’t give it the time of day during the first week. The though of it made him sick.

He hasn’t even used it once. 

He’s got a migraine. When he caught himself in the mirror after sneaking out of bed, the pair of bloodshot eyes in the reflection could only belong to him. How wrecked must he be to forget what he looks like? His cheeks are fuller now, but he’ll always see his mortal underpinnings mocking him anytime he meets the broken man in the mirror. He couldn’t hold the gaze. Pepper is always there for him. Problem is he hasn’t been there for her. This is the hardest thing he’s ever done. He’s done a lot but she pushes him to do more. To be better.

“Peter...I don’t...god. I don’t want to do this.” He runs his hands over his face. He didn’t shave yesterday. The stubble scratches his palms, which he then rubs together, trying an attempt to motivate himself. “I have to. For my sake. More for Pepper’s, being honest. I love her...and for your Aunt’s. I haven’t spoken to her yet. She probably already guessed.” He hiccups. He tells himself it was a hiccup but he knows it was a sob. He’s suddenly mad.

“Fuck you, Thanos. You shit bastard.” 

His body can’t handle what he wants it to do. Do what, exactly, punch phantoms? His legs buckle because his stomach, his fucking stomach, is in horrendous pain again. The doctor said it was gastritis from stress. It feels like a blade stabbing his lower left ribs and back. Constantly. 

He grits his teeth and snarls. “This ends tonight. Right now. You and me, Thanos. You and fucking me. Get out of my head.” 

-

It’s Titan. His memory of it. Red, desolate. All his senses are wired. He hears the wind whistle between the decrepit constructs of a dead civilization. He can taste the ammonia in the air. Smells the sulfur. Smells like hell. 

It’s the place of the battle. Only there isn’t any. Peter is sitting on a flat rock. He’s filtering red-brown sand through his hand. An hourglass without a bottom. 

Tony feels like he should have dressed up for this. He’s feeling naked in his PJs with Peter in the new suit. A wave of indescribable emotion washes over him. He should have brought the cane. 

“Mr. Stark?”

Crazy how a voice can touch you the same way a handshake can. Tony opens his eyes. He stares at the kid. Peter’s expression is questioning and troubled. Troubled for his guardian’s sake. If only you knew kid, if only you knew. 

“I’m ok, Pete.” He walks around finding that if he moves he won't fall over. He claps his hands together surveying the layout but not really. You can talk to ghosts in a dark room and imagine a person or you can find release in confronting them. Works with any situation in life, been done that way since man figured out fire. He made it possible with the dead. _He_ did. You aren’t even really confronting them, you’re confronting yourself but it helps. “Just wanted to talk, you know, about stuff.”

“Oh. You seem upset about something.” His observation has a condition attached to it. Tell me what’s wrong, please. 

“I am.” He can’t take his eyes off of him. He’s alive. 

“I did it,” says Peter, automatically guilty. He has to stop doing that...only he can’t. 

“In fact, it was me. I fucked up-- I’m sorry, I _screwed_ up. Real bad. I got you killed.” 

Peter squints. “That’s what happened?”

The real Peter wouldn’t have taken that at face value. Or he would have, now that he thinks about it. It’s uncanny. He’ll have to patch it. The thought is so cold he wants to turn it off. That’s enough. He saw him and delivered the bad news. He can move on with life.

He swallows. “Yes. I can’t let it go. I keep coming back to this moment and thinking about how it could have gone down. I keep thinking of you and the wizard. You remember him?”

Peter nods. “Yup.”

“Yeah, well he said ‘It was the only way’ then pulled a Houdini on me. Big vanishing act, you included. How--” He’s talking to the world at large now, not just Peter “--Is that the only way? How can any of this be the only way?”

Peter doesn’t have the answers. Tony isn’t sure if that’s how he'd react or not but it’s a lot to ask a kid regardless. He’s turning inward again. He’s confronting himself in front of an audience. He has to purge.

“I was bad with you.”

“I don’t think you were Mr. Stark.”

“No, no, listen. I was bad with you. I held you at arms length and only brought you close you when you were literally dying in my arms. It’s also a nice metaphor because it means I became my father. I was an asshole. I _am an asshole_. Stop worshiping me.” Hate me. I've never admitted that to anyone besides Pepper so you better hate me for it. 

The kid’s confused face always got him. That ‘wha-what?’ that didn’t even have to be said. He thought it was hilarious. It’s stabbing him in the gut right now. Say something. Please. Mercifully he does. “I’m not.”

There’s a pause. He’s taken aback. “I wasn’t expecting that. As in I thought yes the kid does worship me...maybe...maybe I’m the one who can’t forgive myself.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Myself. And you. It’s really me.” He waves a hand at the whole shebang and Peter only looks more confused. “But riddle me this, Underoos. If you were me what right now would you say in this situation?”

Peter glances around their surroundings collecting his thoughts. Fixes on the sky before settling his gaze back on Tony. 

“I lost my parents when I was a kid.”

“You still are one.”

Peter almost dares to roll his eyes. Is that nascent sass he senses?

“A _smaller_ kid. The therapy lady told me I had to let go because they had already let go of me. I had other people who needed me and I had a life I had to live for. Different words for little kids, but I knew what she meant. You gotta let me go, Mr. Stark. It's not easy, it's not...” He sniffs but brushes the past off. If the kid is feeling any sort of triumph at giving his mentor advice he hides it quickly with burning cheeks and shuffling feet. 

“Don’t be embarrassed! You’re right. That’s a very adult thing to say. I’m proud of you. For you what you've done. You moved on. Not everyone can do that.”

Peter smirks, looks up at him. There’s something in that, Tony thinks. Possibly the feeling of having done something right by his father-figure. So that's what Tony tells himself. And he sees himself, too. He sees what he would have been like had his father only cared.

"Anyway, good talk son. I gotta get back to Pepper or she worries. See you around sometime." He has to cut this short or he might try to hug him. A simulated version of him, in which case he'd be hugging nothing again. Now that _would_ be embarrassing.

“But--”

“You’re right. No more. I’m letting go.”


	3. Wong

The portal whirls shut on the scene of destruction. The Sanctum is his to look after now, he will guard it with his life. If Bruce believed his inaction on the matter of Strange to be indifference, he assumes wrongly.

Wong is very worried for his friend. But worry eats away at a stable mind faster than a moth eats cloth. It’s not for his sake he takes deep abdominal breaths and grounds himself with the familiarity of the house. It’s for the rest of the world. If anyone was going to take the epithet Sorcerer Supreme, it was Strange. That may no longer be the case. He has to be prepared for what that means. He must maintain the illusion of a dispassionate monk, despite a colleague having just been whisked away to spirits knows where and who might never return. He takes threadbare solace in the fact that everything in the end is an illusion. Therein lies the problem. It's the fact that reality is false that makes it all the more precious. 

-

Strange is no longer with them. Thousands, then millions, billions and trillions upon trillions are gone. Just like that. 

He keeps his sense of vision shut off to the rest of the world for as long as he can. He experiences rather than sees a disk of void-darkness within the black behind his eyes, deep within his consciousness. He has no choice but to end the Anapanasati with a heavy breath he cannot hold. 

_Stephen...Oh Stephen. What has happened my friend?_

_Where have you gone?_

-

The Vishanti have not spoken, not to anyone. The effects of such a massive loss of life ripples beyond the third dimension. Perhaps they can find no one worthy to be their mouth piece. Or perhaps they’ve been overwhelmed without an earthly champion. Wong knows some days he feels it. Extra-dimensional attacks have increased many times over. Sorcerers all over the globe have had to redouble their efforts. Some have taken to recruiting in the open. Half of him is disgusted by the whole ordeal yet another half thinks this could be mankind’s salvation from a sinking ship. If they are to reach enlightenment as a species, they must know the truth. All of them.

But Stephen would not see it that way. 

He would do anything within his power to prevent one death. Anything. Which has Wong wondering if he knew. Or perhaps he had died at the hands of that alien psychic before he could act. He refuses to think it was the later. Stephen would have found a way to warn him. 

He would have told him something, he would have found a way. 

But he was silent. 

So much promise snuffed out. It’s enough to make you want to break a few vows. 

-

Before Stephen, he was the librarian of the Hong Kong Sanctum. He kept the books like close friends and kept them well. Then one day he was informed he was now The librarian. The other had been murdered by a rogue sorcerer, a book desecrated and a page stolen. He reacted with nothing more than a determined grunt and a promise to not let such a thing happen again. He never cared much for people anyway. He knew how to break a man’s body and still leave him breathing. He could do that, but he took a vow not to use unnecessary force. 

Whoever stole away Stephen - his one true friend- better not show up on the doorstep asking for forgiveness. 

-

There’s rumors that Mordo is about, snuffing out lights in lieu of theft. Lesser sorcerers go into hiding where they can. He takes everything from them, as he did the man Jonathan Pangborn whom Wong finds homeless and without use of his legs. Stephen would be unnerved yet lament for what the best of them had become. 

He never once feels resentment. The life of all the best sorcerers goes one of two ways: You live long enough to forget who you are or you die a horrific death in service to the greater good. It’s the way of the occult. 

_Wherever you are Stephen, you don’t have to worry. The world grows dark but I will remain._

-

Five years have passed in total. He still keeps a candle lit for Stephen, the kind they use a guide back to the body when in astral form. 

He never stops hoping. One day he will see him again. It just might take a very long time.

-

One day the candle goes out. He tsks at it and lights it again. It resists. 

Hmm.

He feels something disturb his aura. It’s subtle at first, a gentle intrusion starting at the sixth chakra. It’s so incredible that he must resist seeing it as an illusion and accept it reality. A light in the darkness...

“Stephen Strange. You’re five years too long. I never got that tuna melt.”

He turns to his friend. The sparks of the portal brush with a hiss against the wooden floor. Stephen Strange emerges like a saint from heaven leading an army, because it looks like that’s a small one gathering behind him. Wakandan. The beautiful sentiment is ruined when he speaks in a very worldly tone. 

“Really Wong? You’re the one who didn’t have any money.”

“It’s not like the bank could help with half the staff missing.”

They stand face to face. Wong lets himself break with decorum, just this once, and grasps Stephen on the shoulder. Stephen does the same. It’s all they need.

“It’s time.”


End file.
